Excerpts
by Fireflyleo
Summary: Violence was an instrument in those days, and Levi found he had a talent for it. A look into Levi's past and how he got to where he is now.


Author's Note: So here is my first contribution to the Shingeki no Kyojin fandom. I am absolutely obsessed with this anime/manga. Minor spoilers for those of you who might not have made it to episode 15 yet, but nothing terribly revealing. Just an exploration piece into the past of a man we know little to nothing about, Lance Corporal Levi.

Disclaimer: I do not own Attack on Titan. The brilliance of it is far beyond my comprehension.

Excerpts

Hunger…

Levi knew hunger. Before he became Lance Corporal, before he became Private, before he even had a name that mattered enough for someone else to speak. It practically raised him.

It tucked him in at night with a dirty blanket, scrubbed his mouth with bile, and read him bedtime stories of cruel kings and binding walls.

Honest work failed to put food on the table, and his father's meager attempt at gaining status through becoming a soldier chalked up to three long years of near starvation and hoping and waiting and training into dust upon his death.

It was hunger that took his father's place as head of the household after a member of the Scouting Legion (A young, sturdy looking, fresh-out-of-training-school scout with blonde hair and sad blue eyes) presented her with his bloodstained cloak and all that was left of the man he'd looked up to: his left hand. Levi was only six at the time, but he remembered thinking that only fools get themselves killed by joining that particular military branch.

Hunger cackled in the corner of the room as his mother wasted away in her misery – she never could handle his father's death. He was seven when she died; heart failure the doctor had said. Then it was only him and hunger… Him, hunger, and solitude.

Solitude…

Solitude became Levi's guardian after that. It kept a watchful eye on him and protected him in the shadow of solitude. It did not feed him, nor did it not coddle him. It only watched as he withered away when scraps were scarce and the prospect of dying seemed far more appealing than living in this shithole. Loneliness aside, it's tough being on your own with no one to depend on but yourself.

Dressed in moldy rags and left with nothing to eat but the rotting garbage, and even that was fleeting. When others targeted the lone child, incapable of defense and hardly able to stand on his own two feet, the hunger pains were worse that night, denied the meager scraps of poison. It angered him, the laughter he heard in his head. Hunger laughing in his mind's eye. His rage fed the entity, but Solitude egged him on. No one else cared. No one else mattered. With no one to disappoint and no one to depend on, who could judge him. Solitude was his only companion.

But then again solitude taught him several lessons.

It taught him how to steal. It taught him how to inflict pain. It taught him how to survive.

Violence was an instrument in those days and he found he had the talent for playing it. A talent that, after a little of fine tuning, gave him the ability to stand against the older, larger street rats scurrying along the edges of town and win despite his small stature and meek undernourished limbs. He had always been small for his age, a trait he reflects on later in his adult life with a vile need to curse. They were clumsy where he was nimble, stupid where he was clever. Granted his wins were never without some sort of price - a black eye, a split lip, maybe a cracked bone.

That was how they noticed him, you see, the kingpins of the Capitol's Underground. They summoned for him. Took him off the streets and shoved him into the ring. Him against another faceless opponent night after night after night only now instead of fighting for scrapes of spoiled food and pocket change, they were fighting for money and attention.

He received both.

Fight…

Levi still remembers his very first match. He'd been eleven years old. His opponent had looked at least two years older with a burly physique, greasy blonde hair that looked like it had been slicked back with spit, and the kind of expression that implied he might need to take a large dump. He wore rings around his knuckles – no rules in these matches – and wore shoes that were braced in metal. When Levi, fresh off the streets of a Wall Maria ghetto wearing the fines rags he could afford and completely lacking into shoes, stepped into the ring, his opponent laughed and said what was probably the most cliché line of intimidation he'd ever heard in his life.

"I hope you're ready to die, little man."

The inflection in his nasally voice made Levi's upper lip curl. His fingertips itched to rip out his vocal cords.

The idiot even had the gall to take a swing in the direction of Levi's head before the final count. It didn't land. It was too slow and too stupid. He might as well have been aiming for air. It's only function was to end the match sooner. Levi never even felt the fear kick in, just adrenaline pumping through his system as the fool swing wildly, seemingly incapable of landing a punch.

A swift kick to the gut later, Levi had the greasy shithead pissing blood for the next week and a half. The sponsors passed him around after that. Large hands pat him down, turned him here and there, all the bastards wanted to get a good look at the new prize winner. And every time a new diamond encrusted hand touched him, he wanted to puke.

It wasn't until after when he was washing the blood off his hand in a swanky mansion bathroom surrounded by spotless decadence and sweet diabetic fragrances that he realizes the magnitude of what had occurred. They'd deposited him there, his sponsors, to let him clean up and shed away the layers of filth coating his skin.

The water in the shower had been hot. They clothes one of the servants laid out for him were crisp and clean and polished if only a little big for him. Everything expensive, everything unsullied and faultless. Everything except for him, a street rat standing in the middle of a palace.

He thinks this is the point at which he developed his OCD. He rubbed his skin raw with a soapy washcloth, took a tooth brush to his teeth until his gums bled, and finally using a comb and a pair of pristine silver scissors, pulled and cut at his hair and scalp until there was nothing left to shame over or feel dirty about.

A Business of Pain…

By the time he was thirteen, Levi was working as hired muscle in addition to competing in the Underground cock fights. Where other thugs travelled in groups, he worked solo. It made him more marketable, more appealing to the bosses. It cost less to hire one talented individual than to hire a group of idiots who might still not get the job done. Levi was talented. A connoisseur of pain and all of its forms and variations. He learned quickly just how hard you can hit before you draw blood, and eventually discovered he could save himself the clean-up if he simply used his boot as opposed to his fist.

Gone were the dingy back alley brawls and the days of street walking. His arena was more often than not the polished floors of wealthy pigs. He'd never be caught dead on the streets, soiling his working leathers amongst all the dirt and grime. No, he paid home-visits to his clients and took offerings in exchange for mercy as a tip. Sometimes it was money, other times jewels. One particularly fat gentleman offered him a night with his sweet virginal daughter – of course back then Levi knew nothing of sex, but the prospect sickened him enough to jam his elbow into the sorry piece of shit's gut.

He wasn't completely heartless though. Most of what he made, he gave away to homeless families or dirty children already swelling from starvation. They, the children I mean, worshiped the ground he walked on. They called him "Sir" and he almost remembered a story his mother once read to him, only he was no chivalrous thief leading a gang of merry men. He earned his blood money. But there was no reason to tell that to the poor Shiganshina housewife who thanked him when he appeared with a small bag of coins he earned bashing in the skull of another faceless opponent in the ring.

"Why don't you come on inside?" she'd asked.

He had declined of course, but didn't make it away quick enough to avoid the returning death march of the Survey Corps. Soldiers wrapped in bandages and covered in shame trudged up the cobblestone streets, wincing at the jostling of injuries and sneers in equal regard. Some heroes they were, thinking they can make anything out of a suicide mission. That military branch is a nest for fools and crazies.

Levi brushed the dust off his shoulder and turned to leave, but before he had the chance to disappear into the back alley, his grey eyes caught and held the gaze of a familiar face. The same soldier who brought back the pieces of his father.

He grit his teeth, eyes narrowing, cussed at the man and left.

Only fools joined the Survey Corps.

Rewards…

There came a day when one of the bosses deemed it a necessity for Levi to reap a special kind of reward. Not money or trade, no this would be a most momentous occasion indeed for a fifteen year old boy entering manhood.

Indeed, he'd thought it strange at first, the way the crime lord's wife had ushered him into a guest bedroom with not much in it save for a full bed and a bedside table. Levi remembers placing his bag on the floor, which he had deemed relatively clean, and sitting on the bed to wait as the mistress of the household had instructed him so.

A few minutes later, the door opened again, this time to reveal a young girl, maybe two years younger than he. She was skinny and pale. Bony in a way only rich bigots would consider attractive, but pretty with pink painting her lips and shimmery shadow lining her eyes. They had dressed her in a sheer dress and skimpy, see-through underwear. He didn't move as she approached him, nor did he speak; he simply watched her approach, youthful yet the sway to her hips far too knowledgeable to the mode of seduction for one so young.

This was the world he lived in he reminded himself. Whores are trained from a young age so that by the time they're teenagers they can be sold for a ripe price to any man with a kick for young flesh – and here, oh there were many older gentlemen who preferred their mistresses a shade too youthful.

But he was fifteen and virginal, so he stared at her.

She remained entirely unfazed, batting her lashes and swishing her long blonde hair behind her shoulders as she knelt in front of him.

It's when she reached for his belt that he moved for the first time. He fingers wrapped around her wrists and he stalled her movements. Only then did he speak, a single command, the only one he would speak the entire night.

He told her to wash her hands.

Offerings…

A year later, exactly ten years after the delivery of his father's disembodied limbs, he once again encountered the blonde soldier who, for all intents and purposes, he considered the bringer of death.

It was a rare calm evening. The streets were quiet, and it was so late the lamps that lined the interior streets were starting to puff themselves out. He was walking home from the pits juggling a gold coin between his fingertips – the fruit of his latest victory. His opponent had died this time, choked to death on his own blood thanks to a blow to the ribcage that broke bone and punctured a lung. He exsanguinated in the corner of the cage they'd been placed in. Levi still remembers watching the light fade from his eyes and feeling dirtier and dirtier every time a new hand patted him on the back. They shoved the gold into his hand as the kid heaved his death rattle.

Levi knew death. It's a part of the job. He watched the collectors crack skulls every day for debts unpaid. He'd seen the bodies of whores being dragged away limp and naked from a bedroom because a patron couldn't reign in his sadistic tendencies or the drugs proved too much of a shock to their systems. He'd seen other fights where the victor couldn't be bothered to exercise restraint – there were no rules here, anyway – but he had never been one to play executioner.

Until now, that is.

The brat had only been thirteen, and Levi had never killed someone before.

He thinks that's why he tossed his winnings into a nearby alleyway. Maybe that was the reason he decided to ram his fist into a nearby brick wall hard enough to split skin and snap tendons and crack knuckles. Or perhaps the rage was his motive for rounding on an approaching stranger eager to bruise and maim and quite possibly kill again. He was always told it gets easier with practice.

But he doesn't get the opportunity to do any of those things.

The coin is thrust back into his face, a leather belt is pulled across his forearms, and a booted foot is shoved into the small of his back.

"How badly do you want to die?"

The words were rasped into his ear; he cursed, displeased with being taken down so easily and the dirt being rubbed in to his cheek.

"Or perhaps the better question is 'how badly do you want to live?'."

He stopped struggling. The question reverberated off the concave walls of his brain, ricocheting violently against his memories to bury itself in a neglected corner were thoughts of things like hopes and dreams and futures sat chained in a dungeon malnourished and on the verge of death. The vibration of its landing nearly choked a scream from his throat, but instead of vocalizing the sentiment, he kicked out in the direction of his larger attacker, smirked at the solid thud of impact, and lifted himself off the pavement with every intention of making his exit swiftly and surely. The male catches up to him though.

"You've got quite a talent, you know that?"

"I don't work for lowlifes," came his reply.

"Ah, but I can offer you something better than gold."

He scoffed. "There is nothing you can offer me that I can't get on my own, you piece of shit."

"How about redemption?"

There was the vibration again. It hurt a little more the second time around, too.

Levi turned, looking over his shoulder in the stranger's direction. The stranger was not so much a stranger.

"You're military."

"I am."

Ten years older and sporting the decoration of a military officer, neat blonde hair and intense blue eyes that had seen their fair share of war and death, this was no stranger. This was the same sorry teen who brought down the news that would change his life gift wrapped in a bloodstained Legion cloak and token of honor.

"You delivered my father's limbs. Thanks for the shitty telegram, but that was a long time ago, and I don't give a shit about military dogs."

"My name is Erwin Smith. I'm a Captain within the military's Scouting Legion."

"And I should give two fucks why?"

The older man sighed then.

"You killed a young boy today. I was watching. You feel good about that?"

No, he didn't, but like hell if he was going to answer that question.

"Fuck you, Captain."

He turned to leave, his boots crunching against the cobblestone. The man followed him silently, the sound of his breathing barely a hush on the wind to Levi's trained ear. The teen's knuckles itched to strike the man across the face, to bury themselves in a tender diaphragm, to paint the walls with soldier blood and agonize over whether killing a grown man would feel as awful as killing a fresh-out-of-diapers boy.

"Will you stop following me? It's aggravating."

He was lying. It wasn't so much aggravating as it was entirely disconcerting having eyes on your back.

"Not until you hear me out."

"There is nothing for me to hear."

"There will be," said Erwin. The open-ended statement hung like a threat in the dull lighting.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

No response came, but the whisper of his presence on the air dissipated with the twang of wire.

The Weighing of Options…

Not five days later, Levi might have discovered the meaning of that none-too subtle piece of foreshadowing behind the rusty, dirt-encrusted bars of a military police holding cell. Nursing several cuts, bruises, and a wounded ego, he fumed silently to himself in the back of the block where he beaten the cot's mattress into some vague semblance of dust free.

He knew what he was in for. He was a wanted criminal after all, and with murder acting as the cherry for a long list whipped crimes, he'd be surprised if he ever saw the light of day again. They'd told him as much when they unceremoniously threw him in on his ass the day before.

Barring the occasional taunt thrown at him from the other side of the bars – mockeries of his height mostly – they left him alone to stew in his own fury. Captain Smith paid him a visit at the end of the day. The man waltzed in while Levi had been dozing, eyes half closed from the exhaustion of remaining awake for over 24 hours.

A steel chair slamming into the ground was what woke Levi from his slumber.

There was Erwin, standing tall and proud beside the chair, but it's the taller, darker man that attracted his attention soon after the wake-up call. With the dark circles around his eyes and a pointed beard falling from his chin, Levi wondered whether the man knew the kind of asshole devil impression he gave. The man leaned against the bars of the cell, angling his head to get a better look at Levi. The teen is vaguely reminded of a carrion bird eyeballing a piece of meat that he wasn't quite sure he wanted to eat yet or not.

When he speaks, it was with a gruff and scratchy voice.

"He's a little small, isn't he, Erwin?"

"I assure you he makes up for it in intellect, Commander Shadis."

Shadis hummed, scratching his chin thoughtfully before standing upright.

"Very well, Smith. I leave it in your hands."

And with that the man turned on his heel and left.

"Mind telling me what the fuck that was about."

"You're not exactly in a position to be making demands."

"Fantastic," drawled Levi, slouching against the wall and rolling his eyes to the ceiling.

The blonde sat across the way from him, the chair turned backwards facing the opposite wall instead of away from it, allowing the young captain to straddle the back while facing the caged youth. The man's elbows were hooked at the edges of the squared corners, his wrists crossed left over right as though he were holding a horse's bridle the way some of the fatter nobles enjoyed doing because they didn't know their ass from their face and thought horseback riding was for the show of it all.

"However, you do have a decision to make," continued the captain as though Levi hadn't just wished for the ceiling to concave down onto him.

The brunette grunted at that. What decision? Death by hanging or gunfire. Neither option seemed very appealing to him in the least, but hey, that's the choice you're left with when you've turned yourself into a nameless criminal.

"You can either stay here, steel yourself to a life of imprisonment and/or execution, or you can hear out my previous offer."

Levi's eyes opened a tad at that. Steel-grey irises locked with the baby blues across the room.

"What the hell kind of choice is that?"

"Those are you options. Pick one. Pay for your time or perhaps you can earn yourself your own redemption."

There was that damned word again. He swore this idiot threw the term around like putty, like it actually meant anything to someone like him. It didn't mean anything. Redemption, just like salvation and honor, meant nothing. It was just another pretty word fools threw around the room because they liked the way it rolled over their useless, flapping tongues. An empty promises doused in nothing but false ambition and even falser idealisms. It was a word used in fairy tales and mythologies, not this reality were fathers leave their families to serve themselves as a mid-afternoon snack and mothers abandoned their sons to starvation and death because her heart shattered a few pieces designed to match the number of her husband's limp limbs. Redemption was a word those loud-mouthed clerics liked to stuff into their pockets in bulk and toss into the crowds at high noon for God-fearing sinners to gobble up faster than bread or gold of lunch.

Yet, still, and Levi to this day will never tell anyone why he made the decision he did, the word when spoken off of Captain Erwin Smith's tongue seemed to regain just a fraction of meaning to the sixteen year old who had nothing to live for, nothing to die for, and nothing to lose.

He crossed his arms across his chest and lifted his head to sit straighter.

"I'm listening," was his reply. The blonde had his attention. God save him if this "offer" wasn't worth Levi's time.

"Good, but first, what is your name?"

That threw him for a loop. The corner of Levi's mouth twitched, and you could almost hear the hush of a laugh escape through his nose.

He didn't answer. No right away at least. But when he did speak, it was thus:

"Levi. The name's Levi."

Freedom…

Graduation day for him was different than for the other members of his squad. They were busy pissing over themselves trying to decide which branch to choose: Military Police, Garrison, or Scouting Legion. They all gossiped and compared notes, none of them really having any idea what it would be like to join the ranks of soldiers.

Levi didn't have to choose. He'd made his decision years ago sitting in the holding cell with Erwin sitting across from him. The man had continuously been checking in on him over the span of his training years. How was he doing? How was he picking up the 3D Maneuver Gear? Was he eating alright? Had he gotten any taller?

Useless prattle which served to only annoy him really, but he guesses that he enjoyed the occasional company to a degree, a very mild degree, mind you.

But anyway, the point is he knew his decision.

His initiation into the Scouting Legion was nothing terribly special. No grant induction ceremony. No rousing speech from the Commander. Just enough information given to make the weak-hearted teens wet themselves and move onto the next branch, where they could laze around all day, drinking beer and bonbons for all he cared.

It didn't really hit him until several days after initiation that he was now a part of the most politically hated yet at the same time romanticized branch of the military. To most they were pariahs wasting tax dollars on useless excursions that cost lives and resources, but to some they were the humanity's hope, the heroes that would pave the way to victory against the titans.

To Levi, it was just another job. Just another fight, only this time he had permission to kill and would be encouraged to do so by his comrades and superiors. To Levi it was a transition from one dog fight to another… at least, that was how he felt until he was handed his new uniform.

The soldier handing him his had been only a few years older than him, lanky with a messy haircut and scruffy facial hair. But he'd smiled when he handed Levi the signature green cloak.

"Welcome to the Legion," he'd said. "I hope you've got it in you to live long enough."

"Live long enough for what?" someone next to him asked.

"Live long enough to find out what it means to wear that emblem on your back."

What it means, he wondered. Did it mean they would die young and be eaten before the year was out? Very likely. Maybe, suicide by titan? Possibly. Perhaps, crazy enough to survive nearly getting your head bitten off in exchange for losing it to grips of insanity that were sure to impede on anyone stupid enough to join the Scouting Legion?

Why he chose this over a death sentence, he would never know. Death by rope burn or death by giant maw. It was all virtually the same thing.

But then he remembered something he mother told him when he was younger and his father had just joined the Scouting Legion. She had been showing him his father's uniform jacket, tracing the feather of the emblem with her pinkie finger and encouraging him to do the same.

The fabric had reflected the sunlight back to him in the slivers of white and blue thread much like it did again twelve years later when he received his own and fingered the cloak with less clumsy more experienced hands.

What was it she had called them, again? Wings of something? He could quite remember at first, it was so many years ago. Ah that was right, he recalled pulling the garment around his shoulders for the first time.

Wings of Liberty

They were his now.

Redemption…

"Look, Levi heichou!"

"They say he's got the strength of a hundred soldiers."

"They're calling him humanity's strongest weapon."

This happened every time they go out on a mission, yet to this day, Levi still can't decide which is more annoying the meaningless praise or the constant gawking.

"Shut up," he growls under his breath urging his horse forward knowing that the gate is just a few more blocks down the way and then is nothing but the pounding of horses' hooves, the hissing of steam and the splattering of blood beyond the walls. Nothing but the chance to take at least one more step forward or die trying.

"You know, I doubt they would look up to you so much if they knew what a clean freak you are."

Next to him, Specs rides her horse. Damn woman is probably crazier than he is; he doesn't even want to know what turned her head so loopy, but she's relatively a comrade, so he simply tells her to shut up and continues on his way. But then she starts talking about aberrants and well, you know the rest.

Strange woman…

He looks forward to see the gate start to lift. It's the 56th expedition beyond the walls, and it's been more than five years since he became a scout. Commander Erwin looks back only once to scan over the faces of his men, and for the split second that Levi makes eye contact with the blonde that one word bubbles up in his thoughts.

He doesn't know if he's atoned for his sins yet, nor if he ever will for that matter. All he can do is fight.

He's courting the idea of redemption, not quite in love with her yet after all these years but still willing to get to know her a little better. They talk over the lost lives of soldiers and the blood spilt over steaming corpses, the pride of small battles won and a life spared because he got there just in time.

It's a day to day courtship, his relationship with Redemption. He's still a sinner and she is still elusive as ever. They scream and rip and tear at each other until neither have any idea if pursuing one another is even worth the effort. But he keeps going, keeps fighting, keeps pushing past the deaths and the titans and the constant pain of fighting a losing battle. But he returns to her bed every chance he gets for the chance to claim her for his own, and she accepts him be Redemption is a forgiving lover.

A constant courtship, and their next date starts with the thundering of hooves and the Commander's cry of "Onward!"

Owari

I hope you enjoyed it. Review and let me know what you think.


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